


mad and bad and dangerous to know

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben & Kira:, Bluestocking Rey, Captain Ben Solo, Captain Solo is good at seduction but bad at flirting, F/M, Feral Kira Kenobi, First Love, For Lilithsaur, Fruit metaphors, HEAs for All, Hate-to-love, I Promise I Watched Bridgerton AFTER Chapter One was Completed, Jealousy, Kenobi triplets, Kylo Ren & Rey:, Kylo the Duke of Ren, Leia ships it, Loveletter to Historical Romance, Marriage of Convenience, Matt The Radar Technician & Daisy Kenobi:, Matt and Daisy: The Dumbest Geniuses, Matt and Daisy’s questionable scientific method, Mutual Pining, My Big Stupid Harlequinn/Avon AU, Proposals, Regency Masters of Sex AU, Scandal, Smut, Solo triplets, Tags now attempted to be organized by couple:, Trash Triplets - Freeform, regency au, sexy science, sort of exes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:20:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29384046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: Dr. Matthias Solo and his assistant Miss Daisy Kenobi stumble upon a discovery that could topple polite society.Her radical bluestocking sister Rey, intent on doing so, publishes the scandalous findings and brings near-ruin upon the family.Their third sister, Kira, is just hoping it won’t force all of their hands into unhappy marriages. Even as Matthias and his brothers Captain Solo and The Duke of Ren seem intent on saving all three heroines from ruin.
Relationships: Ben Solo/Kira Kenobi - Relationship, Matt the Radar Technician/Daisy Kenobi, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 24
Kudos: 117





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilithsaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithsaur/gifts).



A tree limb was a poor substitute for a warhorse; but it will have to suffice for the daydream of one. 

Kira Kenobi, the third of her sisters, a woman of acceptable wealth and status while under the care of her Grandfather and in no other ways an eligible young lady in society, presses her hands to the rough bark of the branch she sits astride, palms dragging along the ridges, fingers curling in a little growth of short twigs to tug on like reins. The sweat on her cheeks and brow slithers across her skin and she pretends she is wounded in her glory. She replaces in her mind summer air for fiery smoke, the song of the birds with the thunder of trumpeters, and the faint breeze for a moment of complete clarity in the stillness in battle she had only heard of in stories…

Then a girlish laugh ringing through the woods interrupts her playacting.

The game is a common one, comforting enough that she never tires of playing it, and is eternally grumpy to have it interrupted. Kira reluctantly slits one eye open to peek at the noise below. Passersby on a walk, who wouldn’t notice her astride a tree limb so high above their heads. From the sound of the giggles, a fashionable lady was among the party, not tarrying in the woods too long: soon Kira would be alone with her thoughts once again.

However, she sees the slithery motion of an notedly un-feminine figure follow the lacy fripperies of the laughing lady: a man clad in a dark, fashionable coat, a wry smile on his lips, his gloves removed and clutched in one gesturing hand as he corners the young lady and presses her up against the trunk of the tree Kira is currently held aloft by. H hat is knocked off his head by grasping hands, revealing silky black hair and a hint of a pale profile before he dives for his prey.

Kira remains so high above their heads, that perhaps if she is truly quiet, they won’t see or hear her. She can only hope this will end with only herself aware of how mortifying this current situation is. An indignant puff of air leaves her lips at the sound of a throaty moan from the couple underneath her hiding place. From this angle, she sees the female’s face arch up in bliss. If she opens her eyes, which are shut tightly in stolen pleasure, she’ll be looking right up at Kira.

Kira hugs the limb underneath her with her thighs and says a little prayer. 

She knows looking at this will only draw the eyes back to her, but she can’t help but watch the stern brow and the working jaw of this gentleman: it’s scandalous, but perhaps enough real drama thrown across her battlefield to pretend it’s a real adventure.

Birdsong becomes muted and the war trumpets are leagues away when she hears the smacking sound of the gentleman’s lips against his lover’s skin. He certainly looks like a romantic hero from this angle, the scoundrel, with his pretty black hair and fine profile. Kira grits her teeth and clenches harder with her thighs, telling herself it’s to keep herself planted in this tree, chewing her lip harshly as she hears a moan rise up from the grasses.

After all, it’s _humiliating_ to be trapped up there, on her pretend warhorse, but she has to stay here until they leave because it would be so much worse if she were caught.

While this is perhaps the most real danger in which Kira had ever found herself in the presence of, she had assumed such trysts were a more serious affair than she was currently overhearing. Instead it was all soft laughter, almost empathetic whimpers, the sounds of sighs reminding her of a warm bath or a nap on a summer’s day. It was...playful. It dawned on her, clearing the mists of innocence in her mind, that such activities were  _ fun.  _

Kira grits her jaw to pretend this is a very serious observation she’s making. It made more sense based on the consequences, that women laughed their way to ruin.

_ “Ben Solo, you wretched man.” _

Her sun-warmed face goes pale in an instant. 

_ Of all the blasted bad luck.  _

A gasp falls from Kira’s own lips just as there’s a sharp splintering heard from the trunk of the tree. She glances frantically behind her to see the pale flesh beneath the bark begins to reveal itself as her weight on the limb collapses it a few inches from the main body. It’s going to snap entirely at any moment.

_ “Did you hear something?” _

Kira grasps desperately for a limb above her head, holding on for dear life. She can’t let Captain Solo get a look at her like this. Or have him see her getting a look of him  _ like that.  _ She cannot be caught by such a man in this position and while he is in such a position. __

She curses her rotten luck in a whisper. She should have known from the black hair held in the lady’s shaking fingers. It had to be him.

Now her desperation to not be caught is more powerful than ever.

Her cheeks redden as she lifts her weight off of the limb underneath her, arms straining to keep herself hidden amongst the branches.

“Now I can’t hear anything at all,” Captain Solo croons, not even the least bit disturbed from his work, as he presses his lady further up against the tree in earnest, “perhaps some wild bird.”

Kira feels her hands slipping at the worst possible moment, as another moan rises through the air of that summer afternoon she loses her grip and plummets from the tree, landing ungracefully right at Captain Solo’s feet. 

* * *

  
  


_ “Could I possibly monitor your pulse?” _

Daisy takes a deep breath and withdraws her wrist from her pale green shawl, baring it in the slant of afternoon light in Dr. Matthias Solo’s study. 

“Of course,” she allows, bracing herself for his touch, knowing it was all for the sake of research. 

While the rest of her body is entirely covered by her gown, she still keeps the blanket tight around her waist. Not to protect her own modesty, but the Doctor’s.

Her wrist is taken up by a large and delicate hand with the thumb feeling for her heartbeat. It's so familiar and gentle. She tries not to shiver. To keep herself under control. They haven't even started yet.

“Tell me when it is best for me to begin,” she bites her lip and waits in her seat, which tilts her backwards in a way she finds unnerving. It was bad posture for a lady to be angled so, and quite vulnerable a position to rest with a man in the room. As if begging for something untoward.

Daisy is always unsure at the start. Not from any pressure from her partner in study: but from the weight of her own decisions. Sometimes, in quiet moments, she’ll page through all the research they collected together and the bounty of which will glitter at her like a necklace full of gems. But that is after all of this business is completed. Uncertainty is for the times before she chooses to begin again. 

Sometimes beforehand she is spared by a few moments where he must collect himself, his notes and bits and bobs, all for the sake of science. 

But now he clears his throat abruptly, instead of pausing to gather the last of his materials. 

_ “I believe I’m ready.” _

Daisy nods her chin to her chest self-consciously. Should she be eager to begin, as she is each week, secretly? If she were to do this in front of another man, her reputation would be irreparably ruined. If she had done this as many times as she has before in front of any other man than Dr. Solo, she’d be the most ruined girl in polite society. But he knew all of her secrets, and the quiet and safe exchange of them in his study was how they helped each other. She can trust this man with anything, and it’s led to so much wonderful work—

“Are  _ you _ ready, Miss Kenobi?”

He sounds markedly less sure of this.

She coughs, settling her hands flat on her thighs. 

“Of course. Shall we begin?”

Daisy had found her sense of daring from this somewhat subdued gentleman. Her grandfather is a man who values education and even encourages her to toil away in a laboratory (perhaps with three granddaughters to marry off he was less concerned with the finer details of the youngest's eligibility) so she was always encouraged by him to act as an assistant to Dr. Solo. During this time, Matthias became a trusted friend, and never wanted to pull her ideas from her hands to use as his own. 

She would never have gotten published without his support. In secret, they crafted first a few articles and opinions from their research to be sent to scientific publications that Solo knew would be looking for a mind like hers. 

Yet not hers. 

Daisy was now a respected voice in the scientific community. And at the same time, she was not. Dr. Solo remains as frustrated as she was that it was not her real name that could bear the credit of her work, that she could not be both his brilliant collaborator and a woman of society. Her male pseudonym was celebrated, but all she had of personal congratulations was the occasional private toast of her partner. He at least knew of her brilliance.

Daisy still had his esteem and her very bright mind as a place to be proud of her achievements. With the matter of marriage looming in the not-so-distant future, she assured herself that she could brush against that pride when she eventually shuttered herself away as she was expected to, thinking fondly of these days as she kissed her children goodnight, keeping a secret as she went to sleep beside her husband. Maybe he would never smile at her like he knew just how clever she was, like Matthias did, his eyes warm and pleased over the edges of his spectacles. But she knew her own cleverness. She could remember the smiles from when she was.

It would have to be enough, but this, this project glittered at her as the brightest gem: a discovery she could carry with her through marriage. 

Hopefully used as a primer to any gentleman courting her to see if he would be agreeable to read the research published by two distinguished, anonymous  _ gentlemen.  _ Their thoughts of her work, without ever knowing it was her work, was perhaps the only leg up she had over the whole of the world.

“Alright. I’ll record your heartbeat.”

His breath sifts into her hair when he leans close to press his fingers to his wrist, which is fluttering slightly, as it usually is before they begin. It’s one of those things that is never spoken of, but appears on the copious notes during each session. His thumb moves absently over her wrist as he looks at his pocket watch and counts.

After a tense silence, he gently tugs up the blanket on her lap for her modesty.

The conceit of the experiment is purely scientific, biological, and of a subject they are too grave to consider themselves personally invested in. It came up as a bit of dry curiosity amidst the somewhat unfortunate setting Dr. Solo conducted his research on a study of moisture levels in soil for farming. Looking at microorganisms and evaluating fertility, the presence of life, of certain water levels. Daisy found it fascinating. Unfortunately very few reputable places for scientific discovery did not, so his work was done privately, and with no peers but for Daisy.

This area of study, however, bled into the next completely by accident. And it is in observing accidents with the right eye that such discoveries could be made.

The rented room used for a makeshift laboratory shared a wall with a woman of questionable character. As Daisy had come to be his assistant, as he was a close family friend to the degree of intimacy that her guardian, Mr. Kenobi, for whom Matthias's brother was named, let them work unchaperoned. A chaperone would have put an end to the work from the first meeting, at least, any chaperone that wasn't stone deaf. 

They at first were too polite to comment on the symphony of moans roiling through the rented building. As Matthias was a scholar of the physical body as well as the cycles of the earth the inhabited, a scientific curiosity was posed in an objective way when the noises became too commonplace to blush at but too constant to continue to ignore.

On order to make such shocking noises, what was this woman  _ feeling? _

Matthias Solo has stammered and rattled off what he knew of the mating cries of certain tropical birds, or other mammals, mere farmer’s knowledge: but his hands trembled when he pushed his spectacles up his nose and Daisy realized all at once that he didn’t know, either. That was thrilling to her.

And what was a scientist but someone that wanted to wet their curiosity. Especially after looking at dirt for months on end.

Both Matthias and Daisy appeared to share a common lack of knowledge of the subjects of pleasure: but they both agreed that  _ some _ kind of research had to exist somewhere. Finding none, scientific minds began reaching for answers. First listlessly, lazily, as they performed other projects and published together with other subjects with that question nagging at the back of their heads. But eventually all the dangerous fire had left the subject when afternoons were spent with those voices moaning away.

Both of them were rational humans: and those noises were animal. 

Growing unafraid of burning herself from the heat of it, it was Daisy who made the suggestion that they conduct the research they could not find elsewhere on their own. 

And that is how it came to be that Matthias’s hands are gently tugging a blanket over her lap to preserve her modesty, as her own hand snaking between her thighs. She never wanted to offer up the knowledge that she had done this before her study, and more to the point gently guided Dr. Solo to this conclusion by finding a few magazines that an honorable young lady should certainly  _ not _ be aware of that outlined what acts could be observed and monitored. At first they theorized they could hire this woman next door to help them with their research, but Matthias was too scandalized to allow her into a professional setting with Daisy, fearing of her reputation. 

Because of the intense secrecy of this new area of study, Daisy was clever enough to select a different test subject who would never betray what it was they were in study of.

Her thighs flinch as her hand skates over her sex.

“Are you alright?”

Daisy nods and coaxes her fingers against her body like the milkmaids in those dirty magazines did, before their masters find them and thrash their bottoms. 

“You’re breathless.”

Daisy shuts her eyes and nods.

“I suppose if the results we aim for are for me to scream, I go in with a bit of hesitation even if I hope for success.”

Matthias usually waited until after to deliver an extensive list of questions for what she felt during this experiment. But now he blinks at her like he wants to ask her hundreds more than what they usually jot down.

“How does it feel, still, when you do not?”

As she never has so far, it’s a fair question.

“It’s just such lovely exercise,” she tells him brightly, and the smile she gives him leaves him dazed.

That is what it feels like. Like she’s been running through the woods of her grandfather’s estate. But no guttural moaning, no wounded whimpering, nothing like the high, feral cries that echo from the room next door where a woman spent hours of her day entertaining her  _ guests.  _ Daisy was both feeling confident in her own respectability and also like a failure. Did the female brain need to be broken by social devastation to achieve such orchestral enjoyment, like madwoman’s laughter, or had the unformed brains of all ladies of society instead receive the training to groom such lascivious pleasure out of them from birth? 

Daisy isn’t sure which answer makes her fear for herself the most.

Eventually she’ll need to give him words, observable facts, even now he touches his fingers to her wrist to track the change in her pulse. 

But right now, she just tries to be a creature of feeling, a body doing what it can despite everything society ever taught her, and to be with him while she does.

“I just never know how to phrase it, if what I feel is different to your understanding of,” there’s a little hiccup in the back of her throat when the thought of him performing the same task to himself slips into her head,  _ “this.” _

He looks at her knee, as her body takes up so much of the space he can look at, and it seems the most chaste place to lay his eyes.

“You must be careful not to give me ideas that I should not share with you, Daisy.”

_ She _ has been the only one they monitored. Breathing, heart rate, whatever she can explain about the feeling when she crests. The study is of female sexual response, of course, but she doesn’t know if she’s presenting information that is a deviation from the male because that information is foreign to her. He at least must know his half. It felt reductive to exclude this from their research.

“But you can,” she gasps out, not meaning to quicken her pace against her own sex, but she looks at him and what he’s holding back and she has to. “We are partners here. Equals. You told me yourself.”

She sits up but he stops her.

“I need to manage with a degree of control in this setting for your own safety, Miss Kenobi,” he says at her shoulder, so softly, as his hand settles over her belly and guides her back down to rest. 

Her wet fingers slip out from under the blanket and entangle with his. They both gasp.

Daisy has done this herself for her research so many times, it’s begun to feel redundant. He doesn’t stop her when she gathers his fingers in her slick ones and draws them close. In fact he looks at her very closely, as if the true phenomenon he must observe has just begun.

He curls his fingers around her hand. bows his nose to her palm and smells her essence. 

And then he jots down a note on his sheet of paper.

"What's it say?"

His eyes are both dryly humorous and blazing with passion when he looks back up at her, not dropping her hand.

"This will work better if you do not interrupt my observation, Miss Kenobi."

“Then if it’s just me...” she gently guides his large hand towards her sex. Both of them are now holding their breath as his large hand tucks neatly against her bare cunt, “what do you observe of me, Dr. Solo?”

It feels completely different when his hand twitches to cover her skin.

He stutters and places a firm, searching hand over her mons, dragging it against the source of her arousal. She does not scream, but her neck arches and she moans aloud, which is new amidst their many experiments.

“Dear Daisy? Are you hurt?”

His hand barely moved in fear of harming her. But she felt herself very close to harm if he did not stroke her gently once more.

She blinks widely at him, her chest seizing with harsh breaths, and shakes her head.

His eyes darken in a way she’s never seen before. He’s such a delicate man, so dedicated to his studies that he holds himself very carefully so not to disturb not just his subjects, but the world around him as well. The third son, the scientist, following a Duke and a Naval Captain with his own sense of dignity and purpose. 

Daisy didn’t know how to note that he had polluted this experiment, her body was influenced by his presence, this wasn’t objective anymore. Because she knew she never wanted these sessions with him to stop. 

This is the first time he has laid a hand on her. But it’s clear he has become a careful study. It spills out of her quickly, a cry, not unlike the ones that echo through this building. Daisy has never been able to form one from her own hand. But from his they begin to spill at great frequency as he strokes her. 

She falls back limply as her hips spasm against his touch, the room spinning, noises she cannot think of how she formulates spilling through the dusty silence of the rented laboratory. Dr. Solo keeps his focus until Daisy peaks, until she pushes herself into his hand as if eager to go again, and once more spills over that delicate edge with cries of excitement that imply she was willing to jump from it.

His hand stills and lifts off her when her body goes slack. She can keep going, she wants to say, but can’t, not sure what what he’ll think.

Dr. Solo carefully cleans his fingers with the edge of the blanket and doesn’t move to touch his notes just yet. Which is odd. He just stares at her, as if the period of observation was not yet over.

“Your thoughts?” he asks absently, as if he has none to provide of his own.

Daisy suppresses a giggle and sits up as primly as she can, given the circumstances.

_ “I am not sure if our research has been to yield a result, Dr. Solo, as much as it has been to develop a method…” _

  
  


* * *

The term bluestocking always applied to Rey. However,  _ muddy stockings _ was more accurate. 

While all three girls were models of health, Rey was a natural athlete in the classic sense. She went walking and riding and played lawn games with a skill that intimidated most men in the party. She was breathless, a comely flush ever-present on her cheeks. She dearly loved a laugh and a good party: being beloved by all in how she appeared was easy for her, as dearly loving one thing was to her sisters. Daisy and her studies. Kira and her archery.

Rey laughs breathlessly as she dismounts the carriage into a puddle, barely noticing the shocking cold wet flecks up and down her legs as she lands, as she is already off to the house. With Kira out in the wilderness somewhere and Daisy stuck in a dusty laboratory, one did not have to be busy all season with calls to be the most social of the three sisters, but Rey was busy most days. 

A good joke is still ringing in her ears, easing her spirit, as the carriage filled with her friends rattles off as gloved hands wave goodbye at her out the window. Under her arm was a great deal of pamphlets given to her from friends. She did not read singular subjects like Daisy did, nor did she hoard the information from her readings as was common in her family. Rey read to be able to discuss, to converse, all of it feeding a thriving social life that made her the true debutante of three sisters out in society to be married.

At least amongst all the whispers in society, anyway.

Rey cared little for marriage. She couldn’t find the time, or feel herself ever ready to stop in a world of parties and lunches and politics. To give all that up and wait for callers in her husband’s home didn’t seem at all tempting. And what was a woman who moved in circles of social change to just give up her ideals once the most traditional route chose her?

Rey always returns to her grandfather’s home with enthusiasm of a welcome visitor: but she isn’t home there often. She knows there is a purpose for her lurking under the surface of ordinary life. If she travels often and meets many along her path, she’ll be more likely to find it. It’s why she keeps herself busy. She is a woman of action: what guides her hand was a search that she didn’t dare speak aloud. Her friends would laugh. Her family would laugh. Every man she ever met would laugh.

But Rey knew there was a cause, some kind of sickness in the veins that fed this great world, and she would find it and dedicate herself to it wholeheartedly. And before she found it, it was nice to have allies. Friends. 

Her grandfather smiles when she strides into the library, neither of them minding the mud on her boots.

_ Family. _

She smiles to him and herself as well at how doting their guardian is before kissing his cheek in greeting. He’s raised his grandchildren as his own daughters and has deprived them of no affection. Even with Rey as his oldest, he has made no rush to marry her off, or any of her sisters. Which was a great relief to Rey in a time where she was covering her misdirection with social constant calls that yielded no suitors.

“It appears the Duke of Ren has returned to his estate in the country,” her grandfather says with a tempered indifference. It’s a little too careful. Hiding an implication.

Rey’s good mood dissipates.

“Lady Organa and the Commodore’s awful boy? Is he not busy enough acting as the heir apparent to Lord Vader?”

“His Uncle did not want to inherit the title, Kylo was next in the bloodline and was eager, and he has made an effort to rebuild his relationship with his family since changing his name. Lord Vader is long dead: I for one would like to see his legacy rebuilt around the man I knew in my youth. I think the boy can do it.”

“He's up to the challenge, certainly. I’m sure he’s here looking to sire his own heir, get a yielding country thing fat with babies so he can perpetuate that awful name some more. The title is cursed. Imagine two members of a family at war as adversaries until the master’s death allows his student to ascend in his place. I would hate to be thrust into an occupation merely because the last master has died.”

Her grandfather winces. He's so tolerant of her sharp opinions that it makes Rey pause and raise a brow, daring him to disagree.

“I was thinking, given the long-standing friendship between our families, you might extend an invitation for him to visit here.”

Even that simple request, amidst a very busy schedule, proves too much for her.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen him, Grandfather. It is not a matter of inviting Matthias, or even that cad Captain Solo over for tea. I’ve not laid eyes on him since before his own grandfather snatched him up from his mother’s house. I assume him very much changed.”

Her grandfather sighs placidly as he goes back to his newspaper. It is at least an acceptance of her refusal. 

Rey does not so much as flop onto the nearest settee before she hears a call from the window. She twists to see a buggy full of fashionably-dressed ladies waving from the lane outside the house. A maid enters the room in a rush:

“A few of Miss Kenobi’s friends would like to see if she were free to join them on a drive through the country.”

The maid's eyes are on the carpet, which seems to be soaking up a great deal of mud from Rey’s boots.

“I claim no possession of her,” her grandfather says mildly, “though I was enjoying her brief visit home.”

Rey is already on her feet and straightening her gloves. 

“I’m sorry, Grandfather, I have the most impertinent friends.” 

But her smile is broad and excited.

Rey is not going to wait for the world. And the world certainly does not wait for her.

* * *

  
  


If Rey is dirt, Kira is blood. 

The maids sigh when Rey walks in with her skirt and stockings all dirty, they ask questions to no one at all when they try to get the strange chemical stains out of Daisy’s dresses, but they all gasp when Kira returns to the house after a day’s activities. Today especially, a shocked  _ Eep!  _ flies out the mouth of a younger girl who had just joined the family this summer, for while it was not the first time Kira walked through that door with a black eye, it was the first the girl has witnessed such a shock.

_ “What on earth happened to you?” _

The question comes from the fireplace of the drawing room: the voice is male, less than familiar, and condescending. Kira levels an icy glare at the speaker. 

Mister Dameron and Mister Finn lounge about with her grandfather, both men apparently waiting for eligible young ladies to call on at the house to appear. They both have clenched fists as if the wait had been wearing on them for a while now. 

It must be embarrassing to come to a household of three unmarried young ladies only to arrive and find none of them available.

“I fell out of a tree,” Kira says airily, lifting her bruised chin proudly, and then stalks up to her room with her bow slung over her shoulder. 

_ “Kira! A curtsy would be the best welcome befitting our guests!” _

She hinges her knees without turning around, barely missing a step, before sprinting the final steps. 

Ben Kenobi chuckles fondly. Kira is the hardest to rein, and while the motions of civilizing her have to be made in the eyes of their company, it is a task he has secretly vowed never to fully accomplish.

Once Kira reaches her room, she closes the door firmly behind her and lets out a frustrated breath. She had taken the most furious walk home hoping to release all her anger and humiliation from this afternoon from her system, but unfortunately she was still glowing with shame from the memory of Ben Solo’s wry smirk down at her. She had meant to cast it away by the time she was alone and instead clings to it, working through her wrath and adding kindling to it, now that she has privacy. 

She had crashed to the ground so perfectly beneath him, as if how he wanted, while his lady friend clung to the trunk of the tree and screamed.

_ “A wild bird indeed,” _ he had straightened his uniform jacket with his chest puffed up with a strange pride. Kira’s left eye was shut tightly and her bones felt like a plucked guitar string, vibrating still with the force of her fall against the dirt. His life was clearly filled with sweet laughter and Kira was a discordant chord.  _ “Miss Kenobi. _ I wasn’t expecting you.”

She had dragged the back of her hand to wipe the dirt from her trembling jaw. 

“And yet you are exactly where I’d think you’d be, Captain.”

He reached to pull a twig from her hair. 

“Was that why you were waiting in the trees for me? Or was it an impromptu flying lesson?”

Kira bit back a hiss of pain as she dragged herself to her feet. She’d fallen off her warhorse in the heat of battle. She would soon mend. Perhaps her body sooner than her pride. 

“I didn’t think you’d stoop to haunting my grandfather’s lands for a tryst,” she grit out from a slightly swollen jaw. Perhaps it would be wise to wait to take inventory of her injuries before attacking. 

Kira never regarded herself as particularly wise. 

Captain Solo’s expression darkened when he saw her face twist in pain. 

“Are you alright?”

His lady friend had yet to cease shrieking, hiding somewhere around the other side of the tree’s trunk, shocked and utterly scandalized as if Kira’s presence was more scandalizing than her own tryst.

Kira did not look at her. She kept her eyes on the glimmering expression of Ben Solo. 

“I should probably insist on walking you home. To continue to foster the close relationship between our two families.”

“Perhaps you should stay out of my grandfather’s woods instead, and escort your lady friend home.”

Kira bit her lip and willed her knee not to buckle with her first step. It did. But she kept walking. Somehow she got herself all the way home without accepting his arm. Or his company.

Alone in her room, she doesn't want to obsess over him. She wants to forget about him, as she had been trying to do for years now. Before he was Captain Solo. Before he was anyone else but hers, even as just a childish sweetheart.

Her head falls back against her closed door, a feeling pulsing from the impact of the ground. The music of sweet laughter ringing in her ears. And her brain willfully closes the curtains on the final look of his black eyes searchings her attentively for any harm done.

* * *

  
  


It is like any night in the parlor of old Ben Kenobi’s home: except of course all three granddaughters are home all at once. It’s a rare night that Rey is not at any parties or traveling with friends. Kira has come down from her room to pour over an old book of naval stories she’s already read to ruins. Daisy has even managed an early return from the laboratory this evening. He himself writes a few letters at the desk by the window, savoring the comfort to have them all home. The three girls are reaching an age that he knows they will be snatched up from him eventually. 

Her grandfather suspects the shy doctor has begun to show his hand in his intent to marry Daisy. She’s been blushing upon her return for weeks now. Matthias was not the son of Leia and Han he would have pictured as a particular success with young ladies: but Daisy has the shaking legs of a newborn calf whenever she walks into the house after seeing him. 

She must be smitten.

Rey is a different story. Rey will marry as soon as she sets her mind to it, he knows she will not want for offers, but the object of changing her mind is no one’s but her own. He wonders when that tide of willful independence will shift: determinate on her wants, what Rey will choose for herself.

Kira is his mystery. He sometimes comforts himself with the assurance that is likely Kira will never leave him. She’s never been one for society or performing the wiles of an eligible lady. But seen clearly, known deeply for who she is, Kira inspires deep affection from his most trusted friends and allies. He had hopes for Kira’s character over her manners. High ones.

“A letter came for you, Kira, from Leia Organa. She mentioned to me earlier this season that she would love for you to accompany her and her husband for a trip to Lyme, to see the ocean.”

Kira fidgets, her nostrils flaring with something that’s clearly troubling but her grandfather knows she will never mention. He holds back a sigh. It’s a shame. He likes for there to be happiness between their families, but the subject of the Solos turns her so sour every time he cannot press it in fear she’ll do something truly destructive to their old bonds. 

Though he knows her slightly better than it just being a pure dislike that comes from his granddaughter. Her expression, beneath a firm scowl, has a mournful cast to her eyes as she glances at the writing as quickly as possible:

_ Miss Kenobi, _

_ The Commodore and I would love it if you were to join us on our excursion to the sea at the start of the autumn season, you have been missed from our presence and hope that this will be a welcome invitation— _

She takes the letter and tosses it absently to the piles of papers Daisy has left on the table.

“I don’t think I should join them. They’ll probably want their sons to be along with them, and any ladies who would make the sons a suitable match.”

“Kira, I think that’s the intention behind the fact that  _ you _ are so kindly invited.”

“The Solo men are no match for me,” she tucks her chin stubbornly, and now her grandfather knows for sure he has said the wrong thing, and she will never be persuaded to take the holiday now. It pains him, the kindness of Leia Organa trying to lift her spirits, and how Kira is in constant rebellion of it. He could no sooner say that than having stated it all being a marriage scheme, and Kira was much less receptive to the former.

Unfortunately, there were three Solo brothers, so figuring out where the source of the problem lay was tricky.

“If not one of those fine boys, when will one of my three beloved granddaughters marry?”

Daisy looks up from her book with a fragile expression.

“Do you ask because we inconvenience you, Grandfather?”

“Not in the slightest. I’m prepared to dote on you three for the remainder of your lives. But perhaps the only attention you receive from this world should not solely be my own. I can think my granddaughters deserve that much, can’t I?”

Rey barely glances up from the letter she was writing.

“If I were to marry, it would have to be someone sympathetic to my cause, who would help me any way he could to give us our rights as women. And I don’t think a man like that will come around anytime soon.”

Kira sits back in her chair and crosses her arms sullenly.

“I don’t want men to give me rights. I don’t want men to give me anything at all.”

Rey narrows her eyes at her sister. For three girls of the same age, there would always be a problem of who found anything first. Rey was the one who has mastered how to get what she needed from the way the world worked. Kira being able to gloat that she didn’t need the world as it was, she could live as she pleased, was irksome only because Rey had never thought of that before. 

“You have to be realistic.”

“I don’t have to be anything, especially if being a young lady these days means to make the most of our situation with fantasy and self-delusion, so I do not have to be realistic. Through reality comes death. You can keep it.”

Rey can’t quite argue with that, so the tension in the air buzzes until she purses her lips, leans back, and says, “Where did you get that black eye?”

Kira scrubs awkwardly at her brow with the heel of her thumb.

Their grandfather considers Rey’s recess from her scribbling as the time to inquire about it, and to change the subject: “What’s in tonight’s work, Rey? The new romantic movement? Women’s suffrage?”

“Nothing so interesting tonight,” Rey turns back to her page with a dull expression, “just accepting an invitation to a dinner party.”

“Which is the exact same thing she does when she is working on women’s suffrage,” Kira points out, “I’ve noticed how all political work seems to be a lot of friends in a room simply agreeing with each other.”

“That happens to a benchmark in all students of politics, Kira,” her grandfather dotes, sympathetically noting the rise in redness on Rey’s face. “Youthful fire is as transformative as an ancient sword.”

“If only there were a way to combine those weapons,” Kira muses wistfully, “a staff of light that could cleave a limb clean off in battle.”

Mr. Kenobi turns to Daisy, who is furiously examining her notes from the laboratory made that day with a serious furrow to her brow.

“Well, I have my conqueror and my crusader; how now have  _ you _ set about changing the world today, Daisy?”

Daisy’s flush deepens and she slaps her notes protectively to her chest.

“Hopefully not actively destroying it,” she whispers in a tone so grave her sisters cease glaring at each other and stare at her in a moment of piercing curiosity.

“All from studying soil samples?” Rey observes dryly.

“From  _ your _ petticoat, perhaps,” Kira says dryly, and a wad of paper goes flying across the room and clips the back of her ear.

Daisy’s discoveries go on forgotten for the remainder of the energetic evening. Mr. Kenobi cannot help but enjoy the quarreling, the hidden affection, and the clamoring companionship that fills the drawing room. It’s a finite resource, with three eligible girls in his home, and he knows someday it will run out. 

* * *

Rey is the last to leave that evening, having so many correspondences to complete and Kira not evening managing to draft her answer to her only one before closing her book and vanishing upstairs. Daisy had begged off early, fretful over her scribblings, claiming exhaustion. And grandfather wasn’t one for late nights.

Rey doesn’t think of the mysterious notes again until the whole house is already asleep. She drifts across the room without any intention to look at them. But Daisy left them on the table, and the usually sober-faced girl was so protective of them. Curiosity re-igniting, Rey picks up the stack of papers expecting to see another dull set of charts about watering cycles.

_ Female sexual responsiveness has increased with the help of a partner compared to self-stimulation—  _

_ It is found that the female lacks the refractory period common amongst men and can continue on with sexual activity after climax with no— _

_ The sexual organs of this female are multi-orgasmic at a rate never before observed— _

She nearly drops them in a state of shock. This is what Daisy is researching with Dr. Matthias Solo, of all people? That dull, dry, shy man? That was the most shocking element of all. Rey has been to enough salons to feel she cannot be stunned by art depicting human desire, but  _ science? _ That’s another thing entirely.

This was radical.

This was revolutionary.

This something that could change the world. 

Rey bites her lip and flips through the pages, her eyes widening with every word. This is exactly what she’s been looking for. Something to shake up people, to destroy convention, to further women’s place in society! 

_ It must be published immediately. _

Sometimes when a heroine’s quest does not find them, they simply rush to find it. And so, Rey stays up throughout the night with Daisy’s notes, crafting her plan to publish them in secret. And the very next day, she does. 

In her haste to change the world: Rey misses one key detail before she hands over her sister’s work. Even though she made every plan as carefully as possible to keep her involvement in the publication from being discovered, she has made one mistake. 

Amidst the papers she sent to the press is a written correspondence between Leia Organa and a one Miss Kenobi.


	2. Chapter 2

_ “Everyone’s staring.” _

It’s not Daisy who says it, but Kira, who is always less capable of caring about such things. 

_ This _ is what makes Rey’s skin crawl. It must be very bad if Kira is remarking on it. Daisy, who is more likely to be aware of such a thing, is curled at her arm. Her lips planted on the rim of a glass of lemonade where it is raised to half-shield her own face, eying the ballroom and  _ caring very much. _ Kira’s response to it is smoother, calmer in her unruffled distrust, but very aware in a way that makes it clear it is worthy of note.

Because it is true. 

Rey has assumed, or perhaps assuaged herself, up until this point she is just being paranoid. But Kira voices it first: it feels like every eye in the room is set on the cluster of the three sisters.

“Perhaps you’ve got another fresh bleeding wound about your person yet again.”

Kira clenches her fists in her long gloves. It’s not a fair comment from Rey, who knows this even as she says it. Her swords are lowered for at least a simple ball amongst family friends, a small private dance for the young people in the countryside this time of year. She looks the part alongside her sisters, disqualifying the defensive scowl on her face.

“No, when you were conversing with Miss Connix, everyone in the room divided their gaze between the three of us. They followed you back here too. It’s like all three of us are as deserving to be stared at”

_ Which is strange that it's not just **me** _ is Kira’s unfinished point. Being the one so often looked at harshly.

Rey grits her teeth and straightens her shoulders.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve as much a right to be here as anyone, and we’re not complete embarrassments in our current state.”

“The state of us seems to be beyond the question,” Kira is the first to distrust polite society, as Daisy is the first to fear it, her tone nervous. “It doesn’t seem to matter how much powder we put on over whatever it is everybody seems to think about us tonight.”

Rey’s mouth goes dry. Even her two sisters, who have done nothing to incriminate themselves, have picked up on the fact that something is  _ deeply _ wrong about their reception at this soiree. 

“Perhaps we should go home,” Kira suggests, but Rey just fumes because an evening out of the public eye is no great loss for _Kira._ It's where she'd rather be anyway. That doesn’t mean they should surrender so soon. Perhaps whatever odd rumor can be laughed off with the right introductions. It might _still_ just be paranoia. Maybe one of them laughed too loudly, or made an unbecoming face upon an introduction that was construed incorrectly. Infractions had a murkiness: slights treated as treasonous and horrors society politely ignored. 

Whatever it was, the three sisters seemed marooned as they took their refreshments. The dancing had only just started, but it was odd for Rey to be wanting for partners, as was it odd that out of the three of them, not a single sister was engaged to dance yet.

Panic surges through her. No one could possibly know what she had done. She has taken every precaution to conceal her identity. But something in the air makes her feel so untouchable, discarded, clinging to her sisters for security in terror.

And then something shocking happens.

A one Captain Solo crosses the ballroom and approaches the girls with his widest swagger and his most charming smile. 

“I was looking for you,” he says clearly, directly, with no sense of shame, “but perhaps I missed you because I was first looking too high up above, in case you were trying to fly away again.” 

Both Rey and Daisy are shocked into silence because he speaks plainly to Kira.

Kira seems so at a loss from his mere presence that she doesn’t seem to hear it when he asks her to dance with him.

At first Rey lets out a sigh of relief. A man from a good family, an accomplished man with a fine military career, has asked to dance with Kira. They must all be on better footing in society if that were the case.

Kira stammers for a moment at the offer, her face reddening and the glare set above her eyes deepening. Rey’s heart quickens.

_ Whatever it is, don’t make it worse. Don’t reject a man when we are near that precarious edge. _

“Kira, you can’t say you are otherwise engaged, simply standing here with us all evening. Go dance.”

It’s cruel, but it needs to be said. Kira must dance with the Captain for all to be normal.

Funny, how once one starts to change the world, there is such a strange appeal to the normal. The new world is cold, and the old one is a coat Rey desperately wants to slip back on. 

Her sister swallows an apparently bitter pill and takes the Captain’s offered hand with a cramped smile.

Rey lets out a little sigh as Captain Solo leads away her sister, who seems thoroughly stupefied by his offer. She smiles at Daisy as if to say the stares were nothing. 

But she can’t quite convince herself of that because they haven’t yet stopped. 

Daisy sinks further into the shadows behind Rey, trembling from head to toe as if she is the one discovered. Rey takes a nervous sip of her own lemonade. 

She glances at a cluster of girls also not engaged in a dance and shoots them a brilliant smile. This is a part of a party she enjoys: it’s easy to make friends when no one is vying for the attention of a gentleman. She recognizes one girl from a group of girls she had met while shopping a few weeks ago. Miss Netal, very bright and fashionable. Taking Daisy’s hand, she means to slide into their good graces as easily as she does breathing, but a snicker when the girl she recognizes looks away makes her blood grow cold. 

The immediate rejection of them is obvious.

Rey steps back from her own frantic direction and feels like the room has gotten darker. The snickers keep up with the fervour of the violins. 

With Kira gone, there’s less security between the sisters. It’s like being further marooned, and missing a limb, all at the same time. Kira doesn’t appear to be having a better time with Captain Solo, but at least she’s engaged for a dance, a part of the  _ party— _

Oh. Captain Solo.

The notorious cad Captain Solo. 

No wonder his eyes are glittering at her sister like she is easy prey. The salvation Rey had hoped this was is not in fact a reassurance that no one had linked the article to her family. It seemed to confirm the exact opposite. Captain Solo probably smelled the scandal a mile away and snatched up his pick of the three girls. He was a scoundrel who would take what he could: most easily a desperate, ruined young girl with no reputation to speak of.

Rey dare not even utter it into truth. Daisy is locked at her side, less assured, and pale in the face at their isolation in the middle of a crowded ballroom. It’s all Rey can do not to drag Kira off the dance floor and out of Captain Solo’s lecherous clutches.

She hears Kira's name in the distance and a fluttery, mocking chorus of laughter. Miss Netal and her friends huddled in a nest of gossip.

The song ends and Kira drifts back, a bit less menacing, a bit dizzy, her sharpness muted like a bee floating on a warm summer breeze.

Rey grasps her sister’s hand when she returns to them.

_ “What did he say to you?” _

Kira, who is always ready to assume someone is looking for a fight, looks very confused.

“He said it was nice to see me here, and have the pleasure of dancing with me. We didn’t talk much, he was an attentive partner and mostly just—looked at me.”

Rey’s eyes narrow.

“How did he look at you?”

Kira’s face is a muddy red. Her cheeks puff out as she gathers the will to answer.

“Nothing special. He just kept his eyes on my face, even when we passed partners. Usually men will greet the person next at their hand when we rotate through the line, but he’d be holding the hands of someone else and his eyes would be on me until I came back to him. He snubbed a few young ladies eager to catch his eye. It was curious of him. That’s all.”

There’s another high giggle from the cluster of girls next to them who rebuked Rey’s greeting.

“I’m  _ sure _ sizing you up to see if you live up to your reputation, Miss Kenobi.”

Kira’s eyes narrow, her teeth gnashing, at the same time righteous and confused.

“I can’t think of what you could possibly mean by that.”

Kira had grounds to wonder. While a controversial figure in society, she was not one to attract the attention of men, more a riotous saint or vestal battle-maiden than temptress. It made sense for her to exist out of the clutches of ruinous romance.

Bazine Netal’s lips quirk in a smile.

“Well, a certain  _ Kenobi sister _ has found herself mixed in with a scandalous set of papers published recently,” the coquettish smirk is plastered on her face as she scans over three shocked faces, “ruinous, in fact, considering the material being of a subject that no respectable young lady should know about. Perhaps you can hide behind each other for the time being: but it’s common knowledge that one of you is publishing the lewd recordings of the anatomy of a scabrous whore.”

Daisy squeaks, Rey’s stomach drops, and Kira swings forward as if to strike the girl clean in her impertinent nose. 

Rey grabs her elbow just in time. The ballroom is silent: all eyes on them. They were watching, waiting for something like this to happen.

It’s happened.

Amidst the quiet, Rey squeezes Kira’s raised arm with purpose, and Daisy’s humiliated sobs fill the vicinity. Rey can feel the realization course through Kira: while she was entirely ignorant of what others could be speaking of, her sisters both knew exactly what the source of their scandal was.

Exactly what their role in bringing about it was.

Nobody would think to look to see where Kira faltered, her face growing red. But she unclenches her fist and straightens her shoulders. Rey can  _ feel _ Kira realize what’s amiss. Her ignorance of the scandal is the greatest: only then does it seem to occur to Kira that she is not defending them from a complete falsehood. 

Rey’s face is too grave. Poor Daisy has half-crumpled into an abandoned chair, trembling with horror at what’s happened. 

_ "How? How? How could—?" _ she hiccups miserably.

They must go home. They must figure out a way to fix all this. The three of them using their minds together, surely three sisters working at it would be able to blot out the stain on one’s reputation.

Rey has not succeeded in pulling Kira away for the fight before Kira levels her gaze at her opponent and declares, loud enough for all the  _ ton _ to hear:

“Don’t bring my sisters into this mess. The only one ruined is me.”

* * *

  
  


_ “I can’t believe you.” _

Daisy’s brow is pressed to her knees as the carriage lurches around her. It is moving more smoothly than the course of her sister’s arguing. 

All is over. Surely she will die of misery. Someone has taken her study and published it, and her family name is attached, and Kira has taken the fall for her horrible experiment. She has ruined her sister’s lives. And her own.

Rey is furious at them both.

“Why would you falsely claim your guilt from such a baseless accusation? Ben Solo was already sniffing around you for some kind of intrigue, to claim whatever’s ruined for himself, and you’ve confirmed exactly what the cad is looking for.”

Rey’s tone as she attacks Kira makes Daisy wince and glance up.

Kira’s eyes glint in the dim light of the moon. What Rey has said to her hasn’t chipped the surface of her armor, but her eyes are burning hot and hurt at something there that Daisy can’t quite pinpoint. The anger there makes her shiver a little bit. Even Rey looks a little stupefied at the intensity of it, the depth of it, but Kira tends to be silent about the things that enrage her the most.

They are almost home. If they had only made the short journey home before choosing to do anything else. And yet the retreat feels miles longer because there is no way of fixing this. 

Kira is ruined. All three sisters might as well be. And Daisy’s work was taken in its most rudimentary stages and published before she could help people be made to understand it. 

Her discovery was just a scandal now. Her work will only be mentioned for gossip.

“Is it true?” Kira asks, surprisingly level of voice even though her expression is black. “That one of us  _ did _ publish such writing?”

Rey takes a sharp, long breath through her nose. The carriage fills with silence. 

“It was me,” Daisy says quietly. Kira bites her lip and seems to release a breath at the admission. Taking the fall for Rey would be done with no small amount of resentment, but Kira immediately softens towards her more reserved sister, which only makes her feel worse.

“Kira, I would never have asked you to sacrifice your reputation for it. It wasn’t meant to be published as it was, it was in the stage of crude observation. Even then, I never thought it would see the light of day.”

“I know you had no intention of making waves with your work,” Kira says evenly, “ _you_ are not the revolutionary.”

Again, so tense a silence, so terrible. Rey doesn’t flinch, but it doesn’t need to be said what all three sisters know. 

Kira was the one to save them from Rey’s mistake.

* * *

They arrive, wan as candles burned all the way down, and are surprised to find their grandfather awake and seated in the drawing room. He stands and walks to the door to greet them. 

Kira’s stomach churns. If he already knows, and especially if he knows what she’s done, this night will have reached the furthest depths of agony for her.

Could she have one more sunrise before he looked at her differently?

Disappointing him might be the worst thing she’s ever done.

“Daisy,” his tone is reserved, courteous, and curious all at once, “you seem to have received an unexpected visitor.”

Kira can hardly contain her headache to turn her head and look at Daisy’s guest. She wants to sleep for a thousand years. Now that she’s claimed the spoiled reputation of the family, she might as well do that anyway.

Dr. Matthias Solo fills a chair in the drawing room, vibrating with anxiety, and she feels just awful to have brought such obvious distress to him.

“I must speak with you alone, Miss Kenobi,” he says in a rush. “Your grandfather has given me permission to do so, but...it is very important to me that you will agree to receive me at this late hour yourself.”

Daisy, tucked under Rey’s arm, nods.

The whole house is silent, bare of the usual servants and of many sources of light, as Daisy walks silently into the drawing room and closes the door behind her.

Their grandfather sniffs amidst the moment of tense silence.

“Something has happened, I can tell.” He turns a grave face to Rey, “I don’t want to hear about it this evening. And you will always have a home here.”

Kira knew this. It’s why she said what she said.

Her sisters can still go out into the world. She can go out into the woods. In a strange way, everyone gets what they want. Even if she hates that it was a choice that can’t be unmade now.

“Perhaps I have been blinded by my own affection for you girls, and have been too lax with your upbringing,” Old Kenobi says with a sad, tired voice. “We will speak more of these matters in the morning. Goodnight, my dears.”

He leaves them. Kira and Rey stand in the hall in silence. Outfitted for a dance. Gloves and jewels and slippers still on. Wilting like silk flowers.

“I think Matthias Solo intends to marry her,” Rey whispers when their grandfather has closed the door to his bedchamber, “perhaps this damage will be undone.”

Kira clears her throat with a grunt.

“Is it fixed? Is marriage what will save us? Or will it just make us reliant on whoever is keen enough to take a woman in dire straits, abused because we can accept no better,” she glances coldly at Rey, “since Captain Solo could not possibly be interested in me for any other reason.”

Rey opens her mouth to answer but clearly has none.

Kira hides her heart and mounts the stairs to her room. Dancing with Captain Solo has changed nothing. She will not remember his sly smile, full of familiar warmth, or the glint of candlelight off the brass of his buttons. How dancing with him felt safe because they could follow the steps of this action together. Without straying. Without falling to bits.

She will not remember that she has kissed him goodbye before and he did not return to her the same.

It was just his own selfishness that drew him to her that evening.

All along he knew she was destroyed before she did.

* * *

Daisy can’t have possibly begun to think about how she will apologize to Dr. Solo. She might have never found the words, and yet he’s already in her home, looking very distraught.

“I had no intention of publishing those notes,” she rushes out, “I am so sorry. I lost them. I don’t know how my name was attached, I never put my name on them and will do everything I can to prevent you from being brought into the scandal. There must have been a stray paper amongst them, a letter, or something, but never your name.”

“Do not trouble yourself with how it happened, Daisy, I did not think you were the villain here.”

Doctor Solo is standing with his hands held in tense fists about waist-high.

She doesn’t quite know what to say now.

“I am only here to ask how you are.”

“Oh,” she flushes, and all at once the strength to stand leaves her. She lowers herself to a settee and looks miserably at him as he swiftly takes the chair beside her, “Oh, it’s awful. Of all the work I’ve done to be attached to my name, that this is the one, it is unutterable.”

“It pains me to see it as well, Miss Kenobi. I have always wanted you to be known across England for your tremendous discoveries, but not like this. I am so sorry that I have allowed you to fall into this situation.”

Daisy shakes her head and trembles at the reality of all this. He regrets allowing her to help him. And why shouldn’t he? It’s brought on this whole scandal.

“I must do right by you, Miss Kenobi. After everything you have done for me, I would be remiss to not rise to this occasion for you.”

She doesn’t quite understand.

_ “What?” _

There’s barely a candle lit in the whole room. The one source of light glints off his glasses, obscuring his eyes.

“Will you marry me, Miss Kenobi?”

_ “Oh.” _

Daisy’s head swims.

_ Not like this. Please not like this. _

He swallows, wetting his lips with his tongue in a swift, darting panic. 

“I am a third son, I am sorry to say I have neither my brother the Duke’s wealth or my brother the Captain’s position. I will never be able to provide for you the comforts you have enjoyed here with your grandfather. I debase my status here before you for the sake of honesty, Miss Kenobi, for the sake of not giving you false promises of a future I can't give you. But you would be my respected wife no matter what, and I would never turn my back on you or shun you, and will provide for you all that I can. I am a scientist and, among the social spheres we have come of age amidst, a poor man, but I intend to take care of you, Daisy. Protect you. Honor you. For the rest of your life.”

_Not obligation. I can't bear your_ _obligation._

“I—” her head is swimming with contradictions. She’s horrified to hear him discredit himself so openly. He is not merely a third son. He is a genius, shouldn’t he know that his mind and his work is so deeply beloved by her? That in many ways, even before she was in such a position, what he offers her is her dream?

And yet he only offers it now.

It is very late. Daisy’s work, her friendship, and her future have only been recently destroyed this evening. 

But she knows it is the right thing to do when her eyes fill with tears and she answers “I can’t do that, Dr. Solo,” with as much conviction as one woman on her own can possess.

* * *

  
  
  


_ “Miss Kenobi.” _

Rey whips around too much sharply when her name is spoken. 

The man who addresses her doesn’t step back, but she feels from the way in which other party guests peel nervously away from her that any more reasonable man would have. She’s been on the defensive for days, answering too quickly, responding too loudly, laughing too hard: as if to prove she could still exist in the world she has just changed. 

The storm has passed quickly with one sister taking all the blame. While Rey had to endure odd looks and whispers, she could continue her life as if nothing happened. So she did. She didn't have to decline a single invitation to even save face. Which should feel good. 

But it doesn’t, not even in the slightest, so she’s easily startled from her sense of normalcy. Like she’s foolish to think it could be hers again.

The Duke of Ren blinks once, serenely, despite the wild look in her eyes. Usually she would have a witty remark stored up for this occasion, a comment to entice as much as it would snip down any audacious hopes. 

But instead she blinks back, rapidly, in silence, as if waiting for him to cut down her frantic hold on her place in polite society.

He is as cutting as a gale of winter wind slapping at her face. He’s the same dark of a starless night. He holds himself in his awkward tallness with a biological, animalistic sense of perfection in it all, like a grasshopper or the architectural symmetry inside a seashell. 

His only flaw is a scar that snakes from his brow across his cheek. Plain as a greeting on his face. 

“I request, as a friend of your family, to speak with you about your current situation.”

Only a Duke of his status could get away with speaking to a lady so boldly in public, but Rey is still stunned to silence that he would dare. 

Her mouth opens and nothing comes out.

He’s come to tell her what all are too polite to say. Even if Kira sank herself like an anchor, Rey was still attached to her by a chain and will drag her down. The world she created has no bridges that can bear the weight of her acquaintances, her friends, and she’s already crossed it alone before it crumbled into the rushing water below.

He clears his throat softly.

“Privately, if I may.”

“And bear the rumors?” she feels her voice quiver in a way she does not like. 

She knew his brothers well, even though he was close in age, his inheritance had taken him away to his grandfather’s estate to be brought up as his heir, taken the name Solo from him, and left him unrecognizable even to a young woman who was close to every surviving member of his family. “You can’t think it wise to be alone with me.”

He looks unmoved as he offers Rey his arm.

“Come.”

As salvaged as her reputation may be, it doesn’t feel like she has a choice.

Normally, Rey wouldn’t be cowed by orders, but she is so nervous, feeling like she has had to be on guard all evening, that she simply swallows and takes his arm. The soiree opens up to the gardens of the great house, so it is not too out of the ordinary that a walk in the garden be initiated by an unmarried man and unchaperoned lady, at least so close to the house.

He keeps a pace that almost seems comforting. They move slowly, with great effort, like she can hardly walk at all. 

Her head has felt very heavy these past few weeks. 

“It is not a fine situation to be in, with one sister so utterly spoiled by name in polite society, that it detracts from your own perfectly admirable attributes.”

He says it to make her feel better, but it only makes her burn with guilt towards Kira.  _ Why did she take the fall for her actions? _

“It is unfortunate to say that, as I’ve observed this evening, you are nothing to these people.”

Rey nods numbly. If he expects her to simper and make excuses and agreements about what a shame it’s brought to her and her family, she won’t stoop to that. What he’s saying is true: and she honestly can’t fault him for saying it. 

He clears his throat and drapes a large hand over her forearm, linked with his.

“But you are not nothing to me. You are an accomplished young lady with a good education, carry a sparkling reputation as a scholar and wit, you are a friend to many important social circles, and above your perfectly suitable presence you are the granddaughter of an esteemed gentleman who will inherit, along with your sisters, no small sum.”

He says it like a reassurance.  _ Is _ it reassurance? Because he could just as well be telling her it was all a waste.

Rey grows uneasy as they slip through the mazes, which have a reputation of their own already, but notices Kylo leading her through them with a precision that will exit them out into the open orchards lining the house, instead of following the shadowy path set by a gardener. She knows what those twists and turns lead to.

What does the open space of the fields lead to?

She sees peach trees in the distance. Lord Ren seems keen on bringing her there. Panic sets in. Does he assume her as good as ruined, and wants to tumble her along with her reputation in the mud?

“I’d like to speak further of the people we dined with tonight.”

It’s a pleasant enough tone: but leaden with purpose. 

“Fine people,” Rey says carefully, keeping her arm locked in his, “I am lucky to belong amongst them.”

He seems aware of her hint. He halts their procession at the edge of the treeline, and reaches for a fruit from the ground. 

“If you are speaking of a blot on your reputation making it a sacrifice for them to accept you back in, you are wrong. It was a fine party, fine company, a fine meal. I’m sure you sampled the dessert, made from peaches in this very orchard.”

She opens her mouth to ask what on earth he could be doing, but he overturns the peach in his hands a few times, examining the flesh for a moment, before brushing the dirt from the skin with a handkerchief. Freed from his arm, Rey steps back and watches him from a distance. She doesn’t want to make it clear to him she mistrusts him, but she does, and his intentions, very much.

“But they’d never look at a peach like this, just for a little dirt on it. It’s the exact same thing that is sugared and served on fine china, and yet they’d scorn each lovely bite of it in this form, not knowing it has just as fine taste, better, in my opinion, for not being altered.”

Once sufficiently clean, he hands the peach to Rey without another word.

She examines it on her own, by the faint light coming from the house and the moonlight above. There is no rupture or pock on the skin. No sign of any worm. It’s just a ripe thing that fell and stayed perfect under the layer of dust. 

Trusting this point he is making more than his intentions, Rey takes a careful bite. It’s delicious. The baking of the peaches for the tart served at dinner took all the natural juice away from them. From this bite they leak from her lips in excess, staining her chin, her neck prickling with two sticky damp trails in the cold air. 

“Stupid people,” he tells her, intently, as she chews in silence “would say that such a perfect thing lacked any virtue or appeal from a bit of mud on the surface.”

She glances up at him, mystified. He’s so hard to read, even if he seems incredibly earnest that she should come to understand this lesson.

“I thank you,” she says slowly, “for the reassurance that I do not lack virtue, if that is what you’re saying. But unfortunately it is true that I have fallen from the branch, so to speak, and will likely only be appealing to be eaten by pests.”

She has not even seemed to interrupt his train of thought.

“I am not an idiot,” while her tone was gentling, his only seems to gain momentum as he speaks, “I know your worth. Marry me and you will be seen without stain.”

She looks at him, and at his scar, so the first time with an examining closeness. 

No one knows much about the scar. It was acquired after he left his home as a boy. It is a mark, of course, something that cannot be wiped away, that people have always whispered about the Duke. 

Rey always knew when she reached a certain age she would be staring down the barrel of a few proposals. Some encouraged. Many unwanted things.

She’s not sure she’ll be getting those anymore.

She didn’t picture herself being in such a desperate state when the first came. Regarding the first as it were the last. She’d never given serious thought about marriage because, up until a few weeks ago, she didn’t need it. Her skin was prickling each day that a circle of her friends whispered about  _ those _ Kenobi sisters, she was frightened, she wasn’t the person she once was. 

Rey Kenobi was an idealist. But she had changed the world and herself along with it. 

  
  


* * *

It hurts to see her sisters accepted back into society.

It’s not like Kira was ever widely accepted by them: but when given the excuse to hate her, the rejection burns harder. Well-wishers and dear friends flock to Rey to congratulate her on her wedding. They pet at her and giggle like they had not been swift to shun her at the first hint of trouble. 

The Duke is a regular, if stiff and somewhat unknowable, feature in their home as the swift engagement rolls on. Grandfather doesn’t accept him as the son he never had, but he’s pleasant enough considering the incredible slight Kylo Ren has done to his parents. They will be at the wedding. Watching their daughter-in-law take a name that is not their own. 

While society accepts Rey back into the fold, and Daisy along with her, Kira confines herself to the home with a new sense of restlessness. It was not confinement when she chose not to go out. Now it’s not up to her, and it has her stalking about the house as if it cages her in. She does not go out into the woods for fear of Ben Solo’s persistent poaching on her grandfather’s property. There has to be other prey for him to find that Kira. Some other weakened, ruined thing for him to pounce on.

And perhaps the confinement is heightened because Rey is to be married. While Daisy goes along with invitations because they have been advised by their grandfather it would be prudent for her to, Daisy herself is much depressed in these passing weeks as they prepare for Rey’s wedding. Rey herself will scarcely be alone in a room with her sisters long enough for them to push questions on her about this choice. It is not in her character to give way to expectation and surrender herself to a man. 

Whatever is bothering Daisy, the loss of her work among other things, has hurt her too deeply to turn her attention to Rey. But Kira is trapped, and bored, so that Rey seems to know the confrontation of her choices is on its way when Kira is near. So she flees the room whenever Kira enters, citing another mindless errand to gather her trousseau. 

However, she should have known avoiding Kira in private would only drive the argument out into the light.

It is perhaps the first time The Duke of Ren has formally sat down with her family. Formality seems to be an afterthought about all of this: at least on his end. Rey seems to have kept off the visit until as close to the wedding as possible. So her choice would not gather as many objections by those closest to her.

It is less than a week before the wedding that Kira claps her eyes on Rey’s fiance. Being given very little time: she wastes none of it. No sooner is the fish course brought out the night he comes to Grandfather’s home to dine with them does she turn her intensely-burning attention onto this man.

“And how do you feel about this scandal, Lord Ren? Clearly you have not been put off our dear Rey by it.”

Rey sets down her glass with a squeak. She should have known better than to think Kira would keep quiet just because it was the polite thing to do. Of course this is a trap of her own making. With her dismissal of Captain Solo sniffing around at the first sign of scandal, of course Kira would bury that slight with herself as the hilt until she could pull it out and wield it on her own.

The Duke barely reacts.

“Your recent publication?”

Kira raises her eyebrows at him in challenge. He doesn’t see it, but Rey does, that Daisy’s face goes white and she takes a long sip of wine. 

Rey casts a pleading look at the family patriarch. Grandfather should put a stop to this. But he doesn’t. He’s a man of open social discussion and perhaps allows his granddaughters to be too much their own people, so much so that he will let them struggle with their own mistakes in the comfort of his own home.

Lord Ren tilts his head and lowers his eyelids, considering his own glass. Gathering his thoughts.

“I have no objection to these subjects being explored...in the sacred confines of a private bedchamber.” 

Rey’s face is bright red and she glares hatefully at Kira, who snorts and takes a sip of wine.

“Funny how men can admit that without needing to rush themselves into a hasty marriage.”

Kylo gives Kira an indulgent smile.

“I advocate the correct medium for them. Publication was a cheap shock, however, it promoted a wider spread of such information. Will the scandal of it all overwhelm the overall use of that information? Only time will tell if it was worth the cost.”

Oh, that is like a sword in Rey’s heart. Kira had aimed for it to land there. Her fiance does not know to whom he truly condescends. 

Kylo glances at Rey, his betrothed, and senses her stiffness from the conversation. With some uncertain maneuver, he tries to avoid further offending her.

“Though, of course, your situation is not as dire as society would initially like you to think, Miss Kenobi,” he says to Kira with an uncharacteristic hint of kindness, “and my brother Benjamin still speaks highly of you, to some it has been implied even with his own intention. You are still faced with more options than most girls at a lower social standing than yourself.”

“Thank you,” Kira’s reply is all syrupy malice, smiling coyly at Rey, “I would hate to think I were being forced into my only option out of desperation.”

Kylo straightens and directs his gaze to old Kenobi.

“I should make it clear that any protection I can offer to your family from my position will be at your disposal. I could discretely inquire about matches for your other two granddaughters.”

“Please, Lord Ren, not tonight,” Rey says miserably.

The Duke seems aware that he has now missed twice. He sinks back slightly in his seat, which is an odd sight with his size and strength, to shrink from Rey’s rejection.

Kira almost feels bad for him.

“How is your brother?”

They all look at Daisy, who has been pale and very sad for weeks now. She barely speaks or eats, and hasn’t been able to go to the laboratory at all to work with Dr. Matthias Solo.

Kylo clears his throat.

“I assume you mean your partner, as he always speaks so highly of you.”

Kira stirs at this and her brow furrows.

“You can’t just repeat lies or we’ll catch on.”

_ “All _ of the Kenobi sisters are spoken of highly amongst my relatives. That includes my brothers, my parents, and myself,” his passion dims and he looks gently to Daisy, “he has been very preoccupied with his work, we have admittedly not seen or heard much of him as of late.”

“Please, if you do have a moment, ask him to forgive me.”

The entire table goes deathly silent. Daisy doesn’t even look at Kylo when she asks it. She just stares at her plate like she’s going to cry.

Rey is drawn to tears of sympathy and takes Daisy’s elbow. 

“Perhaps we should draw you a hot bath. If you’ll excuse me”

There is nothing she’d rather not do than leave The Duke alone with Kira. But Kira looks as miserable as the rest of them.

“Miss Kenobi,” Kylo says gently as Rey leads her sister to the door, “I cannot imagine what you think you could have done that my brother Matthias would not forgive. I will be sure he knows of your message before the wedding.”

Daisy gives him a small smile. The first any of them had seen from her in weeks.

“Thank you.”

And now the whole family is in the awkward position of being unable to hate The Duke of Ren.

* * *

  
  


Ironically Daisy receives the most coddling on Rey’s wedding day. They let her sleep, air out her gown, and don’t disturb her until they have to. Her misery threatens to rot the house from the inside out.

This leaves Kira to help Rey prepare for the celebration. A role that does not suit her. 

She arranges Rey’s hair in silence. They might as well be preparing for a funeral.

They are both avoiding the argument they only have moments left to have. Rey’s last morning at home, as their sister, is a sad thing to waste in anger.

So instead of arguing, Kira speaks plainly:

“Rey,” Kira’s face is uncharacteristically sober, “don’t marry him.”

Her sister tries to shrug off the order with a dismissive gesture. “I have to be practical about what’s happened to our family. He has been realistic about the fact that it is in my best interest.”

“Then it was all for nothing? I know what you did, Rey.”

All the guilt and shame and dread has been like the tune of a dirge that never escapes her mind, the notes ever-present and faint, but now the music of it overcomes her at a volume that nearly knocks her off her feet. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You did this to us. So do something brilliant with it, if it cannot be undone. If this was all about teaching women about their bodies and their pleasure and what they’re capable of in society, why are you giving up and joining the rabble when you have just started to  _ act?” _

Kira’s eyes are sad as she crouches at Rey’s feet.

“Don’t give up yet. Fight.”

Rey stiffens and clutches the bouquet on the vanity in front of her.

“I didn’t give up, Kira. You did.”

* * *

  
  


Her argument with Kira is a bloody pox upon her entire wedding day. She has never been one to believe that this would be the happiest day of her life, but she’s more withdrawn as a bride than she ever was as a debutante. 

She was so caught up in her warring thoughts that she found herself already married before she could manage to realize it was her turn to refuse, if she wished. Lord Ren was already bowing to brush his lips to hers when she realized it was over. 

They were married.

She looks upon his scarred face as they feast with their families and guests present. She

Rey found herself being saved by someone also marked, also scarred, though his was the more glaring and obvious. It made her shiver a little, the possibility of one’s sins marring her face.  _ Thief. Liar. Hypocrite. _

Perhaps she chose this because if all will be revealed, he could protect her. Even though Kira took the fall, Rey has a feeling she will be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life.

* * *

Daisy quietly rips apart the bouquet of posies she held during the ceremony. Everyone has returned from the church to grandfather’s house to eat, but she lingers outside the little chapel, the sound of wedding bells a dull echo in her ears.

“Daisy?”

Her eyes lift, and she faintly hears those bells again, sees Rey’s shoulders sag with relief to be married in her mind and flares with that envy for the second time in one day.

Dr. Solo straightens his fine jacket, so different from the rumpled shirts he wears to conduct himself in his laboratory. He pushes up his glasses and wades through the grass that has contained her morose wanderings.

“Dr. Solo.”

He clears his throat and looks at the empty path leading to her family home.

“May I escort you to the luncheon?”

He casts a nervous glance at the shredded flowers in her hands.

“Oh,” she drops the posies, “no, that’s alright. I’d like to stay out here a little longer.”

He keeps his hand at his chest, as if he forgot he put it there.

“Oh. Are you feeling well?”

Daisy hasn’t ever tried to lie to him before. Even her rejection of him was honest. But their relationship, and their experiments, required complete truth between them. And trust. 

This is her first lie to him ever uttered.

“I am quite well,” she smiles at him, her hands in little fists in her gloves, “thank you. It’s pleasant to think of our families as joined.”

Matthias blinks at her, a mournful look in his eyes, and nods stiffly.

“Indeed. Maybe then it will not be so dangerous to have you return to the laboratory. Daisy, if I may—I miss you. I’ve missed you. The work we've done, it was good. For society. For me.”

Daisy bites her lip and wants to tell him everything. As a scientist, as an observer, as a collaborator. As a man. The things he did to her pulse and breathing and body and soul, things that could be quantified, and things that couldn't.

“I don’t think that would be prudent, Dr. Solo,” she says instead, sadly.

He opens his mouth, is unable to speak, and walks alone to the house.

* * *

  
  


The worst thing about being a part of a wedding is Kira isn’t free to choose what she wears. She likes dark clothing, something dense she can vanish into, but she is dressed to attend to Rey in a syrupy sort of lavender, and Daisy in a pure green that seems to match the slightly queasy expression on her face all morning. 

And she is unfortunately seated next to Captain Solo. No sooner do the toasts end that he offers his own felicitations to the sister of the bride.

_ “Yours is a rare beauty.” _

Kira snorts. The bustle of festivities is so cheerful at the table no one even notices her disruption. 

Or they think it best to ignore the most sullied Kenobi sister. 

“I’m one of  _ triplets,” _ she reminds him, his flattery glancing off her shoulder. 

“And yet, there are three identical sisters in this room, and you’re the only one I can’t take my eyes off of.”

“ _ One  _ was just married to your brother. There are other factors benefiting my odds.”

He grins easily at her. 

“I’m glad to hear that you benefit.” 

His eyes are still on her. 

Kira winces and looks down at her plate. 

Captain Solo leans closer, lowering his voice and bringing his lips to her ear. 

“I know that certain remarks will not help me endear myself to you. But I’ll have you know that I have been taking many solitary walks through the woods these days, gazing at the trees above me, hoping that I can pluck you off a branch once again. I hope you are still in season.” 

She holds her breath, waiting for him to lean away before they are caught. It doesn’t happen. He remains so close. 

“And then when I am harvested?”

He chuckles, the warmth of that breath filling the shell of her ear. 

“I search for you in the trees to pluck you down, press you back against the tree, and then kiss the tender skin of your very pretty breasts. If you’d like.”

Ice floods her veins. He would never take such liberties with a girl of virtue. He is under the assumption of what she  _ already  _ would like from her spoilt reputation; that this was who she was. Someone who he could do what he pleases with, sullied, nothing to lose or further damage. 

Kira grips her fork tightly and returns to her food, nostrils flaring, until he leans back in his chair to simply  _ look  _ at her once again. 

“Unless that’s objectionable,” he observes with a guarded sense of ease. His brow is furrowed in a lazy sort of confusion. He clearly hasn’t anticipated how she’s responding. 

“I am not your whore to do what you please with,” she hisses under the din of polite conversation, shaking with anger. 

He turns towards her, his mouth agape, concern flashing in his eyes.

“Please, Miss Kenobi, do not be upset. I didn’t mean you harm or even to impose unpleasantness upon your person, I was wrong in my assumption.”

“No, I’m sure you had no fear of offending the most offensive person at the table. I’ll remove myself.”

Her chair scrapes loudly as she stands. Unfortunately, Captain Solo is so adamant to soothe her distress that it is clear he has caused her to rise so abruptly. 

Every eye stares at her when she rises.

She’ll simply have to grow used to that. 

Rey looks at her from her seat next to her husband, her face drawn and pale and miserable. 

She has no sympathy for her sister and her marital nerves. Rey did it to save herself. Kira did this to save her sisters. 

Leia Organa rises much more gracefully than Kira did.

“Kira, thank you, I did want to take that turn about the garden for some airs,” she offers her hand and a hinting smile. Numbed to obedience and searching for a reason to leave Ben’s side, Kira takes her hand.

“Should I escort you?” Ben says, sounding more nervous than Kira’s ever heard him.

Leia walks, not led in the slightest by her guide, without looking back at her son. He is seated almost by an invisible force when his mother waves her hand for him to do so.

“Not at all. I’m sure we can find our way without your help.”

Both women are silent until they are out of doors. It is rude to leave the table of her sister’s wedding feast, but Kira feels all the better to be out in the fresh air. She breathes it in and tries to calm the rage coursing through her.

“My son has bungled things.”

Kira slits an eye open dubiously, the peaceful fog in her mind disrupted.

Leia croaks out a chuckle.

“He wants you for himself, I can tell. More than most women; for he’s bolder than he’d dare to be for a passing flirtation. Pursuing you at the wedding of your sister and his brother, with his parents seated nearby, no less. He'd never let us see his intentions is he was not serious about them. There’s more on the line there than I thought he was capable of risking.”

Kira’s mouth feels dry. Leia might be telling her this to comfort her, but it is not doing it’s part to soothe. 

“It is no secret what state my reputation is in. With no meaning to insult you, ma’am, I cannot trust his intent or the intent of any man who’d have me.”

Leia gives a hardy croak of a laugh.

“Smart girl. Though I have reason to believe that some of the best matches can be made by a man who can smell the trouble in you. And bring it out.”

Kira gawks at her for a moment, but Leia just gives her a knowing look and pats her hand.

“You need some air from this stifling situation. I want to repeat an invitation that seems needed now more than ever. Come with the Commodore and I to Lyme. I promise none of the boys will be joining us. I think a visit to the sea will do you good. You will not need to keep your head down in shame when you are there. You can keep your face out to the sea, with the rest of the world at your back.”

It sounds so nice. Her throat is swollen from a sob that can’t come out.

Kira speaks the truth after so many painful lies:

“I do think leaving might be the best thing for me now.”

* * *

It is late when Rey arrives at the grand house, of which she is the new mistress. Kylo had said something absently along their journey about not waking the servants when their journey is complete in the night, especially after a long evening of travel, and that such introductions and tours could be conducted in the morning.

She feels burned rather low and could use replenishment before this intimidating task, so she merely nods. 

She has been readied for bed by a sober, silent maid. She waits up in her nightgown. Not quite knowing what to expect.

Nothing was spoken of about him coming to her room. She wonders if that's what he implied when he spoke of her exhaustion to certain formal activities. Maybe she has been shut up in her room to be handled, like all official matters, in the light of the next day. 

There’s a short rap at her door once she begins to question if she should just put herself to bed. She rises and opens the door without asking who it is. She was so unsure if she should bother waiting for him that there’s only relief that he’s there. 

Her husband is still in the clothes she married him in. He stands there with a candle in his hand, and when she silently allows him entry, he sets the holder on a table by the mirror. The trick of light doubles the brightness of the room, with the one candle she had burning before he arrived.

Kylo approaches her slowly and the realization comes not like the dawn, but like the bedclothes being ripped from covering her head in an instant: Rey is to enter into the world she had made once again. 

_ The sacred confines of a private bedchamber. _

“Rey,” he brings a hand to her neck and kisses her. 

Rey had wanted to experience the world before she made any final decisions. She did not think the only man she’d ever kissed would be her husband. Yet the first time she tried it was today, after they were pronounced husband and wife.

Her hands shake when she reaches for his cravat. Should she be helping with this? Serving him, is that what a wife did?

He gives her a small smile, the gentleness in stark contrast with the scar that tears apart his face, and pulls her hands away from him. With a careful hand, he guides her back to her bed and motions for her to sit upon it.

“Wait for me here.”

Obedience was something Rey has feared all her life. Submitting. Relenting. And yet instruction is so welcome she crawls backwards to the pillows without looking away from him.

He unthreads his cravat from the knot at his throat.

“Tell me, are you well-versed in your sister’s work?”

She clings to the blankets beneath her and gives a reluctant nod.

_ More than you will ever know, your grace. _

He breaks his eyes from her and begins to undress. Rey swallows as he appears to do it entirely without shame. And not just his jacket and cravat. To her horror, he swiftly becomes naked before her. Efficiently, distracted, because after his trousers are off and his feet are as bare as his chest, his eyes are on her flushed face.

She supposes it’s easier to see him from across the room than wonder what was working amidst her body with them pressed close. She can see his male anatomy hanging between his legs. It looks swollen, red and heavy, and flexes with these slight turgid movements with her eyes on it. 

There’s something so needy about it that she has the most bizarre impulse to pull it into her mouth and cradle it there lovingly.

Then he moves easily to the bed without shame. 

He is _very_ comfortable as he proceeds. His hands grasp her body without shyness.

Rey yelps a little when he pulls her to the edge of the mattress and pushes the hem of her nightdress up her legs. Her stockings cover a lot of skin, so she thinks little of it until he bares her thighs and her lap under his gaze.

_ “Oh.” _

His nose nudges the line of bare skin above her stocking. A kiss presses to her inner thigh, and his brow nuzzles up. 

He doesn't stop until she swallows and adds:

“What are you doing?”

He lifts his head with an incredulous expression.

“Pleasuring you. If you recall there’s a current fascinating scientific study traversing around London that it makes the body more receptive to the more mutual activities between married couples.”

Rey slams her eyes shut and falls back onto the pillows. Oh God. Her stupid idea has  _ educated _ this man.

“Do you have an interest in my  _ reception?” _

He nods, his head bowing over her lap, and a tongue slowly dragging across her sex. This does feel different. It does make her receptive. Wanting to pull him closer instead of pushing him away. Her legs tense up as his tongue swipes at her, desperate hands pulling his hair. 

“Oh,” she says again, “I didn’t peg you as a man of science, that’s fun _ —ny.” _

Rey squirms against his mouth: her meaning doubling by the moment.

He chuckles, but not at the same joke, moving dutifully closer and caressing her again. He grasps her hips tightly and holds them down until Rey begins to shake beneath him: half disbelief, half bliss, that she could be feeling something like this during her marital duties. 

He pulls away, having done his part in leaving her limp and very, very receptive on the mattress. She feels like he could enter her sex like water. She feels like an ocean meant to surround him. She feels like a peach and he just has to take the first bite.

"Is it working?"

She stares dazedly up at him as he brings his hips over hers. Something unyielding nudges the flesh his mouth has softened.

"Yes. Do go on," she licks her lips, "husband."

Marriage seemed like such an enslavement, but these is already such delicious enjoyment she doesn't understand how anyone could dread it. No duty to be found under his blankets.

Rey gasps as he adjusts, bringing himself closer, and then cups her face with one large hand. A part of her, the part of which none of this evening has gone as expected, nearly laughs from pure nerves. But her husband bows to kiss her and she just shivers as he pushes firmly in. The struggle with which he enters does not negate the necessity for his previous efforts. It reinforces them: with the thick length of him and the stretch that is just enough to be a perfect struggle. Without his clever mouth, she might have been defeated. Or perhaps she's already defeated, and he took the unbearable fight out of it all.

With ease Rey loses herself in one night of gasping, overwhelming pleasure.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The first scene was not supposed to be Kira falling out of a tree but once you write it that's the whole story.
> 
> I feel like every Trash Triplets fic I write is me adamantly proving that Kira is not the asshole.


End file.
